Talk:Pac-Man Plus

Hack sold to Namco?

If I'm not mistaken, wasn't Pac-Man Plus also created as a hack of the original Pac-Man by some non-Namco people, then later sold to them (much like Ms. Pac-Man)? MAME even requires the original Puck-Man ROM in order to play Pac-Man Plus, indicating that it's the same basic Pac-Man code with a few sprite changes and disappearing mazes. --Birdhombre 19:18, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

(Wow, this is 17 years after the fact) I don't think Pac-Man Plus was actually "sold" to Namco. It was an unofficial and unauthorized hack of the original board, as you said, but unlike Ms. Pac-Man, it didn't get Namco's blessing in any way that I'm aware of. The fact that MAME requires the base Pac-Man ROM images to play Plus is merely a reflection of the fact that this is a hack of the original game. It's an incomplete replacement of the ROMs on the board, which means that some of the original ROMs are still there. That's the biggest reason why MAME requires both in order to play it - essentially, it installs the Pac-Man ROMs and then swaps out the individual ones that pertain to Plus (overrides them).

The fact that Plus has merely altered the original code and graphics doesn't have anything to do with its relationship to the franchise. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 23:50, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Also, there are home ports of Pac-Man Plus, created by homebrewers and fans. In fact, there's an excellent one for the Atari 2600 that combines Pac-Man, Pac-Man Plus, Hangly-Man, and Hangly-Man 2 (which combines the gameplay elements from Hangly-Man and Pac-Man Plus), but since it's a hack of an existing game that's still being sold (Ebivision's Pesco), I hesitate to put links to it anywhere, lest Wikipedia be accused of promoting piracy. - 24.131.38.46 14:00, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Similar to above: Homebrew versions of the game are absolutely not in any legal way related to the franchise. At best, they're considered derivative works, and at worst, they can be considered piracy or trademark infringement. You were wise not to link to sites that carry those ROMs for legal reasons, but more to the point, those links wouldn't really have any relevance to the article anyway. A brief mention of them could be notable if we have good reliable sources for them that state, for example, how these ports influenced the franchise or the genre, contributed to the consoles' sales or ongoing cult following, etc. Even then, the bar for that is pretty high.

I realize this reply is way way long after the original ones, but I figure it's still useful to put out there for the benefit of others who might be wondering the same things. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 23:50, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

404

the killer list of video games link appears to be 404 68.194.16.14 13:33, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

that game is rip off --Hello, I'm a Wikipedian! (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:46, 16 May 2010 (UTC).

This game IS official

It is a common belief that Pac-Man Plus was an unautharised game along with Jr.Pac-Man and Baby Pac-Man, but that is'nt actually true, Pac-Man Plus WAS an official Namco licenced game. The marque on the arcade cabinet states licenced from Namco as do the flyers, Midway's Jr. and Baby do not. Also Namco has rereleased Pac-Man Plus several times, on Jakks TV Games and on mobile phones.

The article should be corrected so it has this information. Thank you. 90.194.128.134 (talk) 12:02, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

As of 2022, I personally haven't found a source that backs this up. IIRC, it was covered in Kent's book as unauthorized, though Namco eventually did recognize it as part of the series. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 23:02, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

Additional thought: The "Licensed from Namco" bit on the marquees for all of the Midway Pac-Man games is misleading. They could get away with putting that on the marquees because they held a license to the general Pac-Man property - the agreement between them and Namco was that Midway was the company to publish all Pac-Man (and generally all Namco) properties in the USA, and it wasn't strict enough to prevent Midway from making their own derivatives. However, Midway abused this by essentially claiming American ownership of the license and saying they had free reign to create new titles in the franchise, which Namco did NOT intend to give them permission to do. That's the reason Namco terminated the agreement. As for officiality, Namco is the actual owner of the Pac-Man franchise, so they get to dictate what is official and what isn't. Their decisions are arbitrary, and as such, they only chose to recognize Ms. Pac-Man as an official title - but even then, they've stopped doing that recently due to litigation with GCC (the AtGames dispute). — KieferSkunk (talk) — 23:41, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

Also worth noting that one might ask "Why didn't Namco sue Midway?". The reason is that, at the time, Namco didn't have a business presence in the United States, so they were unable to file lawsuits against American companies. The most they could do was to change or terminate the license agreement. If this were to have happened today, Bandai Namco could have sued their pants off and likely won, both for copyright infringement and breach of contract. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 08:33, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

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